Ultima Thule by Henry Handel Richardson — Read

When Mary came out of the surgery and shut the door behind her, she leaned heavily up against it for a moment, pressing her hand to her throat; then, with short steps and the blank eyes of a sleepwalker, crossed the passage to the bedroom and sat stiffly down. She was still in bonnet and mantle, just as she had got out of the train: it had not occurred to her to remove them. And she was glad of the extra covering, for in spite of the heat of the day she felt very cold. Cold. and old. The scene she had just been through with Richard seemed, at a stroke, to have added years to her age. It had been a dreadful experience. With his arms on the table, his head on his arms, he had cried like a child, laying himself bare to her, too, with a child's pitiful abandon. He told of his distraction at the abrupt stoppage of the practice; of his impression of being deliberately shunned; of his misery and loneliness, his haunting dread of illness--and, on top of this, blurted out pell-mell, as if he could keep nothing back, as if, indeed, he got a wild satisfaction out of making it, came the confession of his mad folly, the debt, the criminal debt in which he had entangled them, and under the shadow of which, all unknown to her, they had lived for the past year. Oh! well for him that he could not see her face as he spoke; or guess at the hideous pictures his words set circling in her brain; the waves of wrath and despair that ran through her. After her first spasmodic gasp of: "RICHARD! EIGHT hundred pounds!" the only outward sign of her inner commotion had been a sudden stiffening of her limbs, an involuntary withdrawal of the arm that had lain round his shoulders. Not for a moment could she afford to let her real feelings escape her: her single exclamation had led to a further bout of self-reproaches. Before everything, he had to be calmed, brought back to his senses, and an end put to this distressing scene. What would the children think, to hear their father behave like this? . his hysterical weeping. his loud, agitated tones. And so, without reflection, she snatched at any word of comfort that offered; repeated the old, threadbare phrases about things not being as black as he painted them; of everything seeming worse if you were alone; of how they would meet this new misfortune side by side and shoulder to shoulder--they still had each other, which was surely half the battle? With never a hint of censure; till she had him composed.

But as she sat in the bedroom, with arms and legs like stone, resentment and bitterness overwhelmed her. oh, a sheerly intolerable bitterness! Never! not to her dying day, would she forgive him the trick he had played on her. the deceit he had practised. On her. his own wife. So THIS was why he had left Hawthorn!--why he had not been able to wait to let the practice grow--THIS the cause of his feverish alarm here, did a single patient drop off. Now she understood--and many another thing besides. Oh, what had he done. so recklessly done!. to her, to his children? For there had been no real need for this fresh load of misery: they could just as easily-- more easily--have rented a house. His pride alone had barred the way. It wouldn't have been good enough for him; nothing ever WAS good enough; he was always trying to outshine others. No matter how she might suffer over it, who feared debt more than anything in the world. But with him it had always been self first. Look at the home-coming he had prepared for her! He had hardly let her step inside before he had sprung his mine. Of course he had lost his head with excitement at their arrival. had hardly known what he was saying. Yes! but no doubt he had also thought to himself: at the pass to which things were come, the sooner his confession was made, the better for him. WHAT a home-coming!